If nothing else though you just gotta laugh when the same site that has TFA has article like Windows 8...Yes its that bad. But sadly we all know what this is, its Ballmer's Hail Mary.
Lets face it with triples and quad cheaper than ever PCs are way past good enough so folks simply won't be replacing until they die, which because they aren't even stressing the chips will be longer than ever, and Google and Apple are drinking MSFT's milkshake while it cries like a little bitch in mobile.
So no matter how many laugh at them Ballmer is gonna throw that Hail Mary in the hopes of scoring some mobile sales? Will it work....I'd love to say "LOL Fuck no!" but if the rumors are true and Ballmer is willing to shit a billion down the toilet to sell an iPad quality tablet at Kindle prices? He may just manage to buy himself some sales.
But in any case i think it'll be DOA on desktops, both the chip makers and the OEMs are having a hard enough time moving units as it is, they sure as hell ain't gonna raise the price 40% to throw in touchscreens nobody wants because MSFT wants to be Apple.
Well you have to put yourself in the mindset of a crackhead, you're hurting, you want to just grab and GTFO so you can go swap the loot to a dealer for a rock, so are you REALLY gonna sit there and try to suss out whether its a real system or not? When there is a place next door that looks clean? Nope you aren't gonna waste a second thought, you'll be moving on.
After all it isn't like the car thieves where they already know how much that make/model vehicle is worth, they don't know if there is anything really good, or anything their dealer will take, so they are gonna go for the least risk every time. I used to do ride alongs with a friend that was county PD and we'd see time and time again even those lame fake "protected by" signs would often be enough to get them to move on to the next house.
That said I really can't see paying $200 for the thing when I was able to get my dad a nice 4 camera system for his shop with 500Gb DVR for just $230 shipped from Tiger. I gotta go by there next week to set up the Android phone access (man I'm dreading that, I just know it'll be a PITA) but it took him less than an hour to have it up and recording the inside and outside of his shop 24/7 and the unit is hidden in a back drawer of a junked up corner of the shop so I seriously doubt any crackhead would find it. At least with that if someone does break in we'll have a nice vid to hand the cops.
It would be really hard for me to recommend a single mod without knowing your playing style, some of the mods are designed for more of a "run 'n gun big battles" kinda thing, while others are made for more of an elite style "build yourself up and watch for the factions" kinda thing. Head on over to ModDB and check them out for yourself, there are dozens to choose from no matter which style you prefer.
if you are asking for my personal favs? i like Crossfire, expanded universe is fun, just be sure you download the Freelancer mod manager as it makes switching easy peasy and to answer your questions a GIANT YES to open play, you can just fuck the story and go do what you will, mine, raid, collect bounties, and as you can see from the dates on ModDB its still got plenty of modders. If you can't find your original game its a cheap 10 bucks at Amazon and if you always wanted to be let loose in a big universe to go your own way thanks to the mods you can do that and more...enjoy and maybe you'll run into me mining in one of the belts! Oh and I haven't given it a full run yet but Discovery Mod has fricking HUGE universe, 200+ ships, all flyable, 134 systems, just tons of stuff!
I honestly don't know if that will help. After all by SP2 they had worked most of the bugs out of Vista but you still can't get most people to even think of taking Vista on a bet, once the public has made up its mind that is usually it.
That said after running DP,CP and RP unless you are getting it on a touchscreen tablet or phone I really don't see any real selling points, especially not for business and average consumers. I mean why did XP last so long? Because it worked, by SP2 all the major bugs were out of the way and it did what people wanted which was to boot up and GTFO of the way so they can run their programs, and Win 7 does this even better, with better memory management, jumplists and breadcrumbs make it insanely easy to get back to where you were working the day before, its just a nice OS that works well for businesses and gamers, so why put up with the Metro bullshit? So we can get fingerprints on the new touchscreen we'd have to buy? No thanks.
Because the control freaks that own the systems like Nintendo, Sony, Apple, MSFT, etc are about as likely to allow that as they are to make their systems FOSS?
But if the rumors are true then next year we may all get a choice thanks to GabeN and the Steambox, which if it follows Valve's philosophy on PC will be open to mods and since it'll be a COTS system you'll be able to make mods on the PC and sell them or give them away on both PC and Steambox. But until then it'll be a cold day in hell before one of the established players even allow modding after the system is EOLed. I mean look at how many original XBoxes ended up being used as cheap SD media players? You'd think MSFT would have welcomed those sales when the first system was winding down but nope, they were douchebags about modding the Xbox 1 right to the end.
Not to mention you have to look at how mods can give your game real legs. I recently rebought Freelancer which is from like 2004 because i lost the box in my last move, why would i buy such an old game? the Mods frankly make that game fricking HUGE! Hundreds of systems, stations, bases, factions, you can be a pirate or a miner, join guilds, they created this huge expansive world around the game. And there is no reason you game devs can't make money off the mods either, just look at how Running With Scissors packaged up their Postal 2 with several mods as the "Fudge Pack" and sold quite a few copies.
But you are right, the grey sludge producing bean counters that want a game to be usable exactly X amount of time (so they can sell you the next grey sludge, ala EA) don't want mods because they figure if people are enjoying game A then they might not be willing to buy the same game with one or two features tacked on for another $60. Hell most of the shooters being released today are so damned generic that if you squinted you probably couldn't tell which game you were looking at. Those kinds of devs HATE modders, because often the modders frankly make the game better than they do. For an example Red Faction: Guerrilla with the weapon mods is actually pretty damned fun, without them? Royally sucks, might as well just stay in the truck and just run over everything...yawn.
Everyone seems to be forgetting the most important aspect to security systems like this.....most thieves are crackheads and crackheads? Not the brightest bulbs. Like that old saying "You don't have to outrun the bear, just the other guy" the same thing applies here, as criminals are lazy and stupid and will go for the easiest mark. Will they think it may be fake? Sure but who wants to risk a 3-5 just to find out, when the building next door doesn't have anything at all protecting it?
Well if AC and Splinter Cell had not had the always on DRM bullshit I would have bought both bundles on the last Steam sale, had my CC out and was ready to hit the button when I saw the warning at the bottom and passed.
If any Valve devs are listening? Hi, me and my entire family and most of my friends are your customers so could you do us a favor that would help us give you MOAR MONEY please? I would like to be able to pick games from that big list you have on each sale as well as the daily "under X" lists for when I want to grab something new as an impulse buy but I can't. See I won't take always on DRM or online pass bullshit but the ONLY indication you give us is at the bottom of the game page itself and that sucks. So please in the future, and I know you won't give us a checkbox to simply block any games that have whatever we don't like because the other publishers would shit bricks, but if you could have color coding maybe? Say yellow for online pass, red for always on DRM, blue for the usual Starforce/SecuROM/TAGES kind of DRM, green for GFWL, so we would simply look at the entry and tell by the color stripes or lack thereof whether we want it or not without having to check every. single. entry. that would be nice, thanks.
As for Ubisoft? If they have a game that is Steam only? I'll buy, hell I'll even put up with the occasional GFWL if I have to but I won't buy a single game with limited installs, always on DRM, or online passes, so as long as they are embracing that bullshit they might as well be console only for all I care, because that shit ain't going on my system.
That is what I've long called "PPT math" where some PHB trots out a PPT to whichever politician they are buying this week and goes "As you can see we sold X on the consoles, and since there are many more PCs on the planet we should have sold X+Y but since we didn't? It has to be those ebil pirates! Give us nastier laws."
But what do you expect from such a anti-consumer company like Ubisoft? This is why even though I haven't downloaded a single Ubisoft game I'm sure their PPT has me as a pirate. After all I buy PC games, but I haven't bought any of theirs, therefor i HAD to have stolen them, right? Their shit is just too damned good for me to avoid like the clap because of always online DRM, right?
So if you wanna snatch then snatch, if you don't then don't, they'll have you on their little PPT as a pirate anyway.
I haven't bought any Ubisucks since the always online DRM debacle but since Ubisuck can pull numbers out of their ass how about I pull a few of my own?
I USED to see plenty of pirated games on the PCs that came through my doors, now I don't, why? Steam made it easy and cheap to buy, no different than how many of the music lovers go to iTunes and/or Amazon now instead of wasting time looking through badly labeled P2P files. Funny part is the only games I DO see more often pirated? Those with really nasty system breaking DRM like....drumroll...Ubisuck!
What Ubisuck needs to do is take a lesson from Valve, make it easy, make it simple, make it cheap. I bet if someone at/. would get a hold of Valve and ask them (without naming names) to compare the sales of the bundles with nasty DRM VS those that only used Steam you'd find shock! Gasp! That people don't want to mess with all that hoop jumping, online pass, always on broken down bullshit and so simply walk away or go talk to Mr Pirate that has a functional copy. I know I had my CC in my hand to buy the AC and Splinter Cell bundles...until I saw the always on DRM crap, then I just went down the line and bought other bundles instead.
But this guy says it better than I ever could (warning: Language NSFW but who can blame 'em?) and gives a perfect example of how nasty DRM doesn't do anything but bite the consumer in the ass. Watch as he has to crack his brand new retail boxed game just to get the damned thing to run.
So please Ubisoft, feel free to make console only (which just FYI but CL is full of cracked X360s for as little as $100 with games preloaded) if all you are gonna do is take a steaming dump on your games with always online shit. I USED to buy a lot of your games Ubisoft, hell I'm looking at the Far Cry box sitting on the shelf in front of me where I broke it out to run it during slow periods in the shop, but no more. I don't pirate your games either, I just give my money to companies like Valve that give me working games in return. No Sale.
But whose fault is that? How many times have we seen the megacorps like EA and Sony go "New ideas? innovative gameplay? Fuck that noise! Just keep squirting out sequels to this hit so we can keep on milking the IP, that's the ticket!". I'm sure the guys there had plenty of good ideas but got shut down by the PHBs.
The only nice thing is good devs with good ideas always seem to be able to find someplace to make them and now that indie gaming has exploded they can always start a little shop and actually use those ideas...until they get bought by one of the IP milking megacorps...sigh.
In the end its all moot as long as websites allow ads from third party servers with zero control or accountability. What is one of the biggest if not the biggest malware vector? Infected ads. If they want to have some Google text ads or even static jpegs I have zero problem with that and will happily unblock them, but as long as they are running these JavaScript from hell? Then screw 'em, no way I'm gonna risk infecting my system just so you can show some ads.
Exactly because other than Black hat how many times have we read about criminals carrying around custom tweaked Arduinos to pop locks in hotels? Lets face it folks criminals? Not the sharpest tacks in the box or else they wouldn't be risking years of their lives on low paying crimes like B&E.
You are much more likely to have some maid working on the inside that just opens the door or the criminal jamming a gun in someone's back to get in instead of this CSI style crap so their free fix would not only work just fine to get rid of this frankly totally unrealistic "threat" but I bet hotels that don't do anything at all aren't gonna see a sudden rise of B&E from Arduino carrying criminals. That kind of James Bond bullshit from your average hotel room robber is about as likely as me winning the powerball while being struck by lightning. Could happen but seriously doubt it.
Bah! I had the Coleco which had the great graphics AND could play the 2600 games to boot! I still think the Coleco version of DK Jr was better than the NES version.
The problem I always had with the NES is despite the "Nintendo seal of quality" the amount of shitty shovelware they let into the channel was just insane. For every decent game you probably had a dozen truly crap games, not even counting all the movie license crap they let loose upon their system like a chili fart on a bus. Friday The 13th or Total Recall anyone?
Lets face it folks the only reason to look at a Nintendo Power today would strictly be nostalgia, that's all. Back in the day before everyone had the net it was really useful, it would have tips and codes and walkthroughs for some of the harder popular games but today you can get that stuff in seconds from any number of websites so there really isn't a point anymore.
So lets all bow our heads in a moment of silence for one more thing we old farts remember that has gone the way of the 8-track and then get back to the infinite goodness that is the web.
Show me where I advocated genocide? Citation? I said its the LIVING CONDITIONS and those can be improved if anyone would give a fuck. High speed trams that run throughout the city can alleviate the need for everyone to crowd into the city, smaller housing units with decent security can help with the overcrowding, clinics for the poor can help get them in before that bug turns them into a walking germ factory.
If you want to talk about genocide that is exactly what i think the 1% are creating the conditions for with their actions, sending jobs to the third world where they can turn huge tracks of farmland into toxic waste dumps (fully 20% of China's farmland is toxic and unfit for human consumption) while filling the air with toxins that weaken the immune systems and give cancer to the poor, and by packing the factories into toxic megacities they get poor packed in like rats hoping to earn enough to keep their families from starving. Its a recipe for disaster and the next superplague I have no doubt will begin in the third world and then spread through the crowded conditions of the ghettos and barrios.
Dude I don't think you've really thought it through about how truly fucking sick and twisted the shit we are talking about here. Imagine a 3 hour video of...say an 8 year old being brutally raped and tortured. Now since YOU are gonna have to be the one to testify about this vid you are gonna have to sit there, taking notes mind you because again you are being called into court and its often the details that hang these guys, for the entire fucking three hours. Now picture you gotta do that shit 5 days a damned week not counting the weekly trip to the therapist.
The only reason my buddy can do this, which i point out every time he tries to recruit me, which he does often because I'm good at data recovery, is that he spent 20 years working in the morgue and those guys all have the ability to totally disconnect. Everyone else would be puking like a buzzard dealing with the nasty shit you get in a state morgue, like bodies that have been in the bottom of a cold ass lake for a year or two until the gasses finally made them pop up, but the morgue guys can be eating a sandwich and dealing with that shit.
Believe me pal, while we don't talk specifics just from what he is able to tell me....oh HELL no, there ain't no way in hell you can unsee that sicko shit.
The sad part? as someone who actually have to clean these machines it doesn't matter about UAC, or low rights mode, or any possible security you put in the OS because in the end it becomes another case of the dancing bunnies and there is no tech cure for that short of sticking them in a walled garden ala Apple where they can't do a damned thing without the corporation's approval.
I've seen it a million times, all the malware writer has to do is offer them the right carrot, be it some celeb nekkid, some free porn, screensavers, hell I've seen people infect their machines for a chance to win an iPad. Offer them a cookie and all the security levels and permissions and AV software is worth jack and squat because they will disable it with a smile on their face.
In the end all you can do is educate those that will listen and be ready to clean up the mess like with TFA for those that don't.
But how simple is it for the user? With EasyConnect (really don't know what kind of setup you had to get an error, I've run it on DSL, cable, and WiFi) its literally 3 clicks. click on Remote, click next, click on my name, that's it.
The problem when you are dealing with ordinary folks is there is NOTHING you can count on, nothing at all. I had one grandma that when i told her to hook the laptop to the cable that was coming out of the router unplugged the cable from the router and then into her PC, so her laptop and desktop were wired together. When you are dealing with users with THAT little amount of skill it needs to be 1.-As simple as humanly possible, if it can be done in one button great but less is always better, 2.-safe, because if its still running after you finish they will have NO CLUE on how to shut it down, 3.-Require no skills that your average 5 year old doesn't possess.
Simple friend, a combo of Tiger kits and Steam selling multiple copies dirt cheap. Hell during the last sale I got me AND both boys Saints row 3, all three copies were less than $50 together, and that's probably the most expensive MP game we've ever bought. Frankly it would have been cheaper but the boys wanted all the silly DLC, I only got the Genki Bowl and a couple of the weapon packs.
As you can see you can get a monster PC for $340, they also got a quad with 8Gb for $315 but since my oldest has been doing good in college my dad decided to treat him to a 6 core while I gave my quad to the youngest and built a 6 core for myself about 6 months ago. Just go to Geeks to get a cheap refurb gaming card for each unit (We went with the HD4850s and love 'em, but you can decide what works best for you and yours) and finally a family pack of Windows 7 for around $100 online and voila! Multiple gaming PCs on the cheap. If you don't mind dealing with rebates you can get black edition quad kits for $250 which will shave another $90 or so off the price, more than enough to cover 2 of the HD4850s or to get something a little faster.
In any case between the Steam midweek madness sales and the weekend sales and the big twice a year sales frankly you and your kids will be ass deep in killer games for frankly less than the cost of a single copy of most AAA titles. As a bonus with a nice cheap 20 inch monitor a piece the PC is also their school PC, their entertainment center, their jukebox, and with having fast multicore chips frankly they should be able to game on them for years and years with nothing more than swapping those $50 HD4850s for another $50 card a year and a half or so from now. As it is the boys blast through SR 3, L4D I & II, TF2, all our games run with plenty of bling and zero skipping or lag. And with Steam playing a game with them is as easy as popping up a chat window and saying "Hey are one of you up for some gaming?" and away we go.
You really should try it, its so much nicer. No more fighting over the TV, no more arguments over what anyone is gonna play, many of their friends are now on Steam too (after the boys bragged how cheap I could build computers it wasn't long before their friend's dads gave me a call) and its as hassle free as can be. Plus you just can't beat the selection, tons of free MMOs, plenty of cheap shooters and sandbox games, platformers, there are so many great cheap games on the PC that there is no way we can play 'em all and its really cheaper than the consoles in the long run. And don't worry if you've never built a PC before, these new designs are so simple they literally come with pictures.
I'd say the best advice above all is DON'T PANIC. Every time something nasty happens its always the panicked ones getting screwed over, a little common sense, a little thought ahead of time, and you are good to go. I always try to keep at least a week's worth of canned goods and Gatoraide (in the south water is fine, but if you don't replace the salt you sweat out in the heat you can get in a bad way all too quickly) along with enough gas in my truck if the excrement really hits the bladed cooling device i can always go visit my country relatives who have generators and plenty of foodstuffs. I've already talked to them and as long as I bring the trucks and the movies we're always welcome.
Now as far as data? Having a spare PC in the closet not plugged in is always a good thing, even if there isn't a disaster you never know when you are gonna blow a PSU or have a board die and with the Tiger kits being so damned cheap its really no major cost. Multi-Tb USB drives are pretty affordable and so is a little wall or floor safe, put them together as you said and there is the data solved, and if you want to have a spare mobile I've picked up plenty of returns from Cowboom and those Acer dual core netbooks are right at $200 and will fit in a safe just fine, just break it out to charge it once a month and you'll have portable goodness on tap. Nice thing about those little netbooks is they are so low power you can run them on just about anything, car adapter, charge 'em off a generator, hell I wouldn't be surprised if you could charge one with a solar charger but I've never tried.
But everyone should always have enough supplies for at least a week or two on hand, that's just common sense. After all there are earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, lots of different things could cause your area to go without for a few days and having supplies ready just in case is really something everyone should have around. Just be sure to check the dates regularly and use the stuff getting close to expiration while replacing it with fresh and you'll always be prepared.
Apple is a boutique brand dude, like Prada or Porsche. Its a totally different demographic which is why studies shown the average Apple X86 buyer made $110K a year and the average non Apple buyer makes between $35-45K a year.
The SECOND that multicores dropped from the "Jesus Christ!" price tags my ass was popping them into systems, because I DO care about my systems, I'm damned proud of them in fact. While everyone else was using the cheaper boards that would only hold 2Gb? My boards held 4Gb, now my boards hold a bare minimum of 8Gb but most go to 16Gb or even 32Gb
And if they need more? They can have it, cheaper than Apple and with better hardware. I always laugh at the "Microsoft tax" while nobody says squat about the "OSX Tax" which tends to add 40%-60% markups, its just nuts. Frankly the ONLY reason I would point anyone at an Apple is if they worked in a niche where they needed retina, such as the medical field, everyone else? You can have a monster laptop with better specs for less money.
So if you really really REALLY hate Windows? just grab something like that and add OSX. For everyone else they are better off coming to somebody like me who'll build them a custom designed machine around their usage, instead of taking what any OEM decides what is best.
I have a friend that works in the state crime lab and yeah...there are some really sicking fucking individuals out there. The only way he is able to do his job is the state pays for him to have a therapist who he "data dumps" to but no matter how many times he tries to get me to work there...fuck no, oh FUCK NO. Not enough brain bleach in the world to have to actually look at that kind of shit 5 days a damned week, no fucking way.
I feel sorry for the dude in TFA because talking to my friend I can only imagine the kind of sicko shit he had to look at every. damned. day. What is seen can't be unseen folks and some of the horror stories told to be by my friend....lets just say imagine the absolute sickest thing you can, then crank that up to 11.
In this case? No its not because the stigma of rape means for every one reported there are probably 7 that aren't so the stats are crap. in the end none of that matters though because tarded is tarded and common sense alone should have been enough for the vast majority to go "WTF, is he high?" and that should be the end of that.
After all we have people that think the earth is 6k years old and Adam rode on dinos but I don't think trying to show them the math don't work would help, do you?
It all depends on what you need the tool for. If I need to do heavy lifting I have an AMD 6 core with an HD4850 that does my heavy lifting just fine, but when I'm mobile? Im not doing heavy calculations, I'm downloading parts, going to OEMs to price replacements, I'm actually...oh what's the word...oh yeah WORKING. So what I need then is a unit that is easy to carry, gets great battery life, easy to plug into a customer's screen if they want to check out what I'm doing, etc. That's why I sold my full size for the EEE, it weighs only 2.5 pounds, gets between 5-7 hours depending on what I'm doing, and is small enough I can simply slide it under the seat of the truck when I need to pop into a store.
Frankly I never understood the whole "monster laptop" thing, because how many actually need to do heavy lifting AND are gonna need to do that lifting on the road? What, is someone asking that guy to design new engineering samples in solidworks from his hotel room? Over the years I've met maybe a half a dozen guys that actually NEED monster laptops while for the rest? It was an ePeen thing which is what the other poster sounds like. Its a laptop dude, not your dick.
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If nothing else though you just gotta laugh when the same site that has TFA has article like Windows 8...Yes its that bad. But sadly we all know what this is, its Ballmer's Hail Mary.
Lets face it with triples and quad cheaper than ever PCs are way past good enough so folks simply won't be replacing until they die, which because they aren't even stressing the chips will be longer than ever, and Google and Apple are drinking MSFT's milkshake while it cries like a little bitch in mobile.
So no matter how many laugh at them Ballmer is gonna throw that Hail Mary in the hopes of scoring some mobile sales? Will it work....I'd love to say "LOL Fuck no!" but if the rumors are true and Ballmer is willing to shit a billion down the toilet to sell an iPad quality tablet at Kindle prices? He may just manage to buy himself some sales.
But in any case i think it'll be DOA on desktops, both the chip makers and the OEMs are having a hard enough time moving units as it is, they sure as hell ain't gonna raise the price 40% to throw in touchscreens nobody wants because MSFT wants to be Apple.
Well you have to put yourself in the mindset of a crackhead, you're hurting, you want to just grab and GTFO so you can go swap the loot to a dealer for a rock, so are you REALLY gonna sit there and try to suss out whether its a real system or not? When there is a place next door that looks clean? Nope you aren't gonna waste a second thought, you'll be moving on.
After all it isn't like the car thieves where they already know how much that make/model vehicle is worth, they don't know if there is anything really good, or anything their dealer will take, so they are gonna go for the least risk every time. I used to do ride alongs with a friend that was county PD and we'd see time and time again even those lame fake "protected by" signs would often be enough to get them to move on to the next house.
That said I really can't see paying $200 for the thing when I was able to get my dad a nice 4 camera system for his shop with 500Gb DVR for just $230 shipped from Tiger. I gotta go by there next week to set up the Android phone access (man I'm dreading that, I just know it'll be a PITA) but it took him less than an hour to have it up and recording the inside and outside of his shop 24/7 and the unit is hidden in a back drawer of a junked up corner of the shop so I seriously doubt any crackhead would find it. At least with that if someone does break in we'll have a nice vid to hand the cops.
It would be really hard for me to recommend a single mod without knowing your playing style, some of the mods are designed for more of a "run 'n gun big battles" kinda thing, while others are made for more of an elite style "build yourself up and watch for the factions" kinda thing. Head on over to ModDB and check them out for yourself, there are dozens to choose from no matter which style you prefer.
if you are asking for my personal favs? i like Crossfire, expanded universe is fun, just be sure you download the Freelancer mod manager as it makes switching easy peasy and to answer your questions a GIANT YES to open play, you can just fuck the story and go do what you will, mine, raid, collect bounties, and as you can see from the dates on ModDB its still got plenty of modders. If you can't find your original game its a cheap 10 bucks at Amazon and if you always wanted to be let loose in a big universe to go your own way thanks to the mods you can do that and more...enjoy and maybe you'll run into me mining in one of the belts! Oh and I haven't given it a full run yet but Discovery Mod has fricking HUGE universe, 200+ ships, all flyable, 134 systems, just tons of stuff!
I honestly don't know if that will help. After all by SP2 they had worked most of the bugs out of Vista but you still can't get most people to even think of taking Vista on a bet, once the public has made up its mind that is usually it.
That said after running DP,CP and RP unless you are getting it on a touchscreen tablet or phone I really don't see any real selling points, especially not for business and average consumers. I mean why did XP last so long? Because it worked, by SP2 all the major bugs were out of the way and it did what people wanted which was to boot up and GTFO of the way so they can run their programs, and Win 7 does this even better, with better memory management, jumplists and breadcrumbs make it insanely easy to get back to where you were working the day before, its just a nice OS that works well for businesses and gamers, so why put up with the Metro bullshit? So we can get fingerprints on the new touchscreen we'd have to buy? No thanks.
Because the control freaks that own the systems like Nintendo, Sony, Apple, MSFT, etc are about as likely to allow that as they are to make their systems FOSS?
But if the rumors are true then next year we may all get a choice thanks to GabeN and the Steambox, which if it follows Valve's philosophy on PC will be open to mods and since it'll be a COTS system you'll be able to make mods on the PC and sell them or give them away on both PC and Steambox. But until then it'll be a cold day in hell before one of the established players even allow modding after the system is EOLed. I mean look at how many original XBoxes ended up being used as cheap SD media players? You'd think MSFT would have welcomed those sales when the first system was winding down but nope, they were douchebags about modding the Xbox 1 right to the end.
Not to mention you have to look at how mods can give your game real legs. I recently rebought Freelancer which is from like 2004 because i lost the box in my last move, why would i buy such an old game? the Mods frankly make that game fricking HUGE! Hundreds of systems, stations, bases, factions, you can be a pirate or a miner, join guilds, they created this huge expansive world around the game. And there is no reason you game devs can't make money off the mods either, just look at how Running With Scissors packaged up their Postal 2 with several mods as the "Fudge Pack" and sold quite a few copies.
But you are right, the grey sludge producing bean counters that want a game to be usable exactly X amount of time (so they can sell you the next grey sludge, ala EA) don't want mods because they figure if people are enjoying game A then they might not be willing to buy the same game with one or two features tacked on for another $60. Hell most of the shooters being released today are so damned generic that if you squinted you probably couldn't tell which game you were looking at. Those kinds of devs HATE modders, because often the modders frankly make the game better than they do. For an example Red Faction: Guerrilla with the weapon mods is actually pretty damned fun, without them? Royally sucks, might as well just stay in the truck and just run over everything...yawn.
Everyone seems to be forgetting the most important aspect to security systems like this.....most thieves are crackheads and crackheads? Not the brightest bulbs. Like that old saying "You don't have to outrun the bear, just the other guy" the same thing applies here, as criminals are lazy and stupid and will go for the easiest mark. Will they think it may be fake? Sure but who wants to risk a 3-5 just to find out, when the building next door doesn't have anything at all protecting it?
Well if AC and Splinter Cell had not had the always on DRM bullshit I would have bought both bundles on the last Steam sale, had my CC out and was ready to hit the button when I saw the warning at the bottom and passed.
If any Valve devs are listening? Hi, me and my entire family and most of my friends are your customers so could you do us a favor that would help us give you MOAR MONEY please? I would like to be able to pick games from that big list you have on each sale as well as the daily "under X" lists for when I want to grab something new as an impulse buy but I can't. See I won't take always on DRM or online pass bullshit but the ONLY indication you give us is at the bottom of the game page itself and that sucks. So please in the future, and I know you won't give us a checkbox to simply block any games that have whatever we don't like because the other publishers would shit bricks, but if you could have color coding maybe? Say yellow for online pass, red for always on DRM, blue for the usual Starforce/SecuROM/TAGES kind of DRM, green for GFWL, so we would simply look at the entry and tell by the color stripes or lack thereof whether we want it or not without having to check every. single. entry. that would be nice, thanks.
As for Ubisoft? If they have a game that is Steam only? I'll buy, hell I'll even put up with the occasional GFWL if I have to but I won't buy a single game with limited installs, always on DRM, or online passes, so as long as they are embracing that bullshit they might as well be console only for all I care, because that shit ain't going on my system.
That is what I've long called "PPT math" where some PHB trots out a PPT to whichever politician they are buying this week and goes "As you can see we sold X on the consoles, and since there are many more PCs on the planet we should have sold X+Y but since we didn't? It has to be those ebil pirates! Give us nastier laws."
But what do you expect from such a anti-consumer company like Ubisoft? This is why even though I haven't downloaded a single Ubisoft game I'm sure their PPT has me as a pirate. After all I buy PC games, but I haven't bought any of theirs, therefor i HAD to have stolen them, right? Their shit is just too damned good for me to avoid like the clap because of always online DRM, right?
So if you wanna snatch then snatch, if you don't then don't, they'll have you on their little PPT as a pirate anyway.
I haven't bought any Ubisucks since the always online DRM debacle but since Ubisuck can pull numbers out of their ass how about I pull a few of my own?
I USED to see plenty of pirated games on the PCs that came through my doors, now I don't, why? Steam made it easy and cheap to buy, no different than how many of the music lovers go to iTunes and/or Amazon now instead of wasting time looking through badly labeled P2P files. Funny part is the only games I DO see more often pirated? Those with really nasty system breaking DRM like....drumroll...Ubisuck!
What Ubisuck needs to do is take a lesson from Valve, make it easy, make it simple, make it cheap. I bet if someone at /. would get a hold of Valve and ask them (without naming names) to compare the sales of the bundles with nasty DRM VS those that only used Steam you'd find shock! Gasp! That people don't want to mess with all that hoop jumping, online pass, always on broken down bullshit and so simply walk away or go talk to Mr Pirate that has a functional copy. I know I had my CC in my hand to buy the AC and Splinter Cell bundles...until I saw the always on DRM crap, then I just went down the line and bought other bundles instead.
But this guy says it better than I ever could (warning: Language NSFW but who can blame 'em?) and gives a perfect example of how nasty DRM doesn't do anything but bite the consumer in the ass. Watch as he has to crack his brand new retail boxed game just to get the damned thing to run.
So please Ubisoft, feel free to make console only (which just FYI but CL is full of cracked X360s for as little as $100 with games preloaded) if all you are gonna do is take a steaming dump on your games with always online shit. I USED to buy a lot of your games Ubisoft, hell I'm looking at the Far Cry box sitting on the shelf in front of me where I broke it out to run it during slow periods in the shop, but no more. I don't pirate your games either, I just give my money to companies like Valve that give me working games in return. No Sale.
But whose fault is that? How many times have we seen the megacorps like EA and Sony go "New ideas? innovative gameplay? Fuck that noise! Just keep squirting out sequels to this hit so we can keep on milking the IP, that's the ticket!". I'm sure the guys there had plenty of good ideas but got shut down by the PHBs.
The only nice thing is good devs with good ideas always seem to be able to find someplace to make them and now that indie gaming has exploded they can always start a little shop and actually use those ideas...until they get bought by one of the IP milking megacorps...sigh.
In the end its all moot as long as websites allow ads from third party servers with zero control or accountability. What is one of the biggest if not the biggest malware vector? Infected ads. If they want to have some Google text ads or even static jpegs I have zero problem with that and will happily unblock them, but as long as they are running these JavaScript from hell? Then screw 'em, no way I'm gonna risk infecting my system just so you can show some ads.
Exactly because other than Black hat how many times have we read about criminals carrying around custom tweaked Arduinos to pop locks in hotels? Lets face it folks criminals? Not the sharpest tacks in the box or else they wouldn't be risking years of their lives on low paying crimes like B&E.
You are much more likely to have some maid working on the inside that just opens the door or the criminal jamming a gun in someone's back to get in instead of this CSI style crap so their free fix would not only work just fine to get rid of this frankly totally unrealistic "threat" but I bet hotels that don't do anything at all aren't gonna see a sudden rise of B&E from Arduino carrying criminals. That kind of James Bond bullshit from your average hotel room robber is about as likely as me winning the powerball while being struck by lightning. Could happen but seriously doubt it.
Bah! I had the Coleco which had the great graphics AND could play the 2600 games to boot! I still think the Coleco version of DK Jr was better than the NES version.
The problem I always had with the NES is despite the "Nintendo seal of quality" the amount of shitty shovelware they let into the channel was just insane. For every decent game you probably had a dozen truly crap games, not even counting all the movie license crap they let loose upon their system like a chili fart on a bus. Friday The 13th or Total Recall anyone?
Lets face it folks the only reason to look at a Nintendo Power today would strictly be nostalgia, that's all. Back in the day before everyone had the net it was really useful, it would have tips and codes and walkthroughs for some of the harder popular games but today you can get that stuff in seconds from any number of websites so there really isn't a point anymore.
So lets all bow our heads in a moment of silence for one more thing we old farts remember that has gone the way of the 8-track and then get back to the infinite goodness that is the web.
Show me where I advocated genocide? Citation? I said its the LIVING CONDITIONS and those can be improved if anyone would give a fuck. High speed trams that run throughout the city can alleviate the need for everyone to crowd into the city, smaller housing units with decent security can help with the overcrowding, clinics for the poor can help get them in before that bug turns them into a walking germ factory.
If you want to talk about genocide that is exactly what i think the 1% are creating the conditions for with their actions, sending jobs to the third world where they can turn huge tracks of farmland into toxic waste dumps (fully 20% of China's farmland is toxic and unfit for human consumption) while filling the air with toxins that weaken the immune systems and give cancer to the poor, and by packing the factories into toxic megacities they get poor packed in like rats hoping to earn enough to keep their families from starving. Its a recipe for disaster and the next superplague I have no doubt will begin in the third world and then spread through the crowded conditions of the ghettos and barrios.
Dude I don't think you've really thought it through about how truly fucking sick and twisted the shit we are talking about here. Imagine a 3 hour video of...say an 8 year old being brutally raped and tortured. Now since YOU are gonna have to be the one to testify about this vid you are gonna have to sit there, taking notes mind you because again you are being called into court and its often the details that hang these guys, for the entire fucking three hours. Now picture you gotta do that shit 5 days a damned week not counting the weekly trip to the therapist.
The only reason my buddy can do this, which i point out every time he tries to recruit me, which he does often because I'm good at data recovery, is that he spent 20 years working in the morgue and those guys all have the ability to totally disconnect. Everyone else would be puking like a buzzard dealing with the nasty shit you get in a state morgue, like bodies that have been in the bottom of a cold ass lake for a year or two until the gasses finally made them pop up, but the morgue guys can be eating a sandwich and dealing with that shit.
Believe me pal, while we don't talk specifics just from what he is able to tell me....oh HELL no, there ain't no way in hell you can unsee that sicko shit.
The sad part? as someone who actually have to clean these machines it doesn't matter about UAC, or low rights mode, or any possible security you put in the OS because in the end it becomes another case of the dancing bunnies and there is no tech cure for that short of sticking them in a walled garden ala Apple where they can't do a damned thing without the corporation's approval.
I've seen it a million times, all the malware writer has to do is offer them the right carrot, be it some celeb nekkid, some free porn, screensavers, hell I've seen people infect their machines for a chance to win an iPad. Offer them a cookie and all the security levels and permissions and AV software is worth jack and squat because they will disable it with a smile on their face.
In the end all you can do is educate those that will listen and be ready to clean up the mess like with TFA for those that don't.
But how simple is it for the user? With EasyConnect (really don't know what kind of setup you had to get an error, I've run it on DSL, cable, and WiFi) its literally 3 clicks. click on Remote, click next, click on my name, that's it.
The problem when you are dealing with ordinary folks is there is NOTHING you can count on, nothing at all. I had one grandma that when i told her to hook the laptop to the cable that was coming out of the router unplugged the cable from the router and then into her PC, so her laptop and desktop were wired together. When you are dealing with users with THAT little amount of skill it needs to be 1.-As simple as humanly possible, if it can be done in one button great but less is always better, 2.-safe, because if its still running after you finish they will have NO CLUE on how to shut it down, 3.-Require no skills that your average 5 year old doesn't possess.
Simple friend, a combo of Tiger kits and Steam selling multiple copies dirt cheap. Hell during the last sale I got me AND both boys Saints row 3, all three copies were less than $50 together, and that's probably the most expensive MP game we've ever bought. Frankly it would have been cheaper but the boys wanted all the silly DLC, I only got the Genki Bowl and a couple of the weapon packs.
As you can see you can get a monster PC for $340, they also got a quad with 8Gb for $315 but since my oldest has been doing good in college my dad decided to treat him to a 6 core while I gave my quad to the youngest and built a 6 core for myself about 6 months ago. Just go to Geeks to get a cheap refurb gaming card for each unit (We went with the HD4850s and love 'em, but you can decide what works best for you and yours) and finally a family pack of Windows 7 for around $100 online and voila! Multiple gaming PCs on the cheap. If you don't mind dealing with rebates you can get black edition quad kits for $250 which will shave another $90 or so off the price, more than enough to cover 2 of the HD4850s or to get something a little faster.
In any case between the Steam midweek madness sales and the weekend sales and the big twice a year sales frankly you and your kids will be ass deep in killer games for frankly less than the cost of a single copy of most AAA titles. As a bonus with a nice cheap 20 inch monitor a piece the PC is also their school PC, their entertainment center, their jukebox, and with having fast multicore chips frankly they should be able to game on them for years and years with nothing more than swapping those $50 HD4850s for another $50 card a year and a half or so from now. As it is the boys blast through SR 3, L4D I & II, TF2, all our games run with plenty of bling and zero skipping or lag. And with Steam playing a game with them is as easy as popping up a chat window and saying "Hey are one of you up for some gaming?" and away we go.
You really should try it, its so much nicer. No more fighting over the TV, no more arguments over what anyone is gonna play, many of their friends are now on Steam too (after the boys bragged how cheap I could build computers it wasn't long before their friend's dads gave me a call) and its as hassle free as can be. Plus you just can't beat the selection, tons of free MMOs, plenty of cheap shooters and sandbox games, platformers, there are so many great cheap games on the PC that there is no way we can play 'em all and its really cheaper than the consoles in the long run. And don't worry if you've never built a PC before, these new designs are so simple they literally come with pictures.
I'd say the best advice above all is DON'T PANIC. Every time something nasty happens its always the panicked ones getting screwed over, a little common sense, a little thought ahead of time, and you are good to go. I always try to keep at least a week's worth of canned goods and Gatoraide (in the south water is fine, but if you don't replace the salt you sweat out in the heat you can get in a bad way all too quickly) along with enough gas in my truck if the excrement really hits the bladed cooling device i can always go visit my country relatives who have generators and plenty of foodstuffs. I've already talked to them and as long as I bring the trucks and the movies we're always welcome.
Now as far as data? Having a spare PC in the closet not plugged in is always a good thing, even if there isn't a disaster you never know when you are gonna blow a PSU or have a board die and with the Tiger kits being so damned cheap its really no major cost. Multi-Tb USB drives are pretty affordable and so is a little wall or floor safe, put them together as you said and there is the data solved, and if you want to have a spare mobile I've picked up plenty of returns from Cowboom and those Acer dual core netbooks are right at $200 and will fit in a safe just fine, just break it out to charge it once a month and you'll have portable goodness on tap. Nice thing about those little netbooks is they are so low power you can run them on just about anything, car adapter, charge 'em off a generator, hell I wouldn't be surprised if you could charge one with a solar charger but I've never tried.
But everyone should always have enough supplies for at least a week or two on hand, that's just common sense. After all there are earthquakes, floods, tornadoes, lots of different things could cause your area to go without for a few days and having supplies ready just in case is really something everyone should have around. Just be sure to check the dates regularly and use the stuff getting close to expiration while replacing it with fresh and you'll always be prepared.
Apple is a boutique brand dude, like Prada or Porsche. Its a totally different demographic which is why studies shown the average Apple X86 buyer made $110K a year and the average non Apple buyer makes between $35-45K a year.
The SECOND that multicores dropped from the "Jesus Christ!" price tags my ass was popping them into systems, because I DO care about my systems, I'm damned proud of them in fact. While everyone else was using the cheaper boards that would only hold 2Gb? My boards held 4Gb, now my boards hold a bare minimum of 8Gb but most go to 16Gb or even 32Gb
And if they need more? They can have it, cheaper than Apple and with better hardware. I always laugh at the "Microsoft tax" while nobody says squat about the "OSX Tax" which tends to add 40%-60% markups, its just nuts. Frankly the ONLY reason I would point anyone at an Apple is if they worked in a niche where they needed retina, such as the medical field, everyone else? You can have a monster laptop with better specs for less money.
So if you really really REALLY hate Windows? just grab something like that and add OSX. For everyone else they are better off coming to somebody like me who'll build them a custom designed machine around their usage, instead of taking what any OEM decides what is best.
I have a friend that works in the state crime lab and yeah...there are some really sicking fucking individuals out there. The only way he is able to do his job is the state pays for him to have a therapist who he "data dumps" to but no matter how many times he tries to get me to work there...fuck no, oh FUCK NO. Not enough brain bleach in the world to have to actually look at that kind of shit 5 days a damned week, no fucking way.
I feel sorry for the dude in TFA because talking to my friend I can only imagine the kind of sicko shit he had to look at every. damned. day. What is seen can't be unseen folks and some of the horror stories told to be by my friend....lets just say imagine the absolute sickest thing you can, then crank that up to 11.
In this case? No its not because the stigma of rape means for every one reported there are probably 7 that aren't so the stats are crap. in the end none of that matters though because tarded is tarded and common sense alone should have been enough for the vast majority to go "WTF, is he high?" and that should be the end of that.
After all we have people that think the earth is 6k years old and Adam rode on dinos but I don't think trying to show them the math don't work would help, do you?
Actually 5 years ago I was selling Phenom I X3s and X4s...care to try again Mr Snobby?
It all depends on what you need the tool for. If I need to do heavy lifting I have an AMD 6 core with an HD4850 that does my heavy lifting just fine, but when I'm mobile? Im not doing heavy calculations, I'm downloading parts, going to OEMs to price replacements, I'm actually...oh what's the word...oh yeah WORKING. So what I need then is a unit that is easy to carry, gets great battery life, easy to plug into a customer's screen if they want to check out what I'm doing, etc. That's why I sold my full size for the EEE, it weighs only 2.5 pounds, gets between 5-7 hours depending on what I'm doing, and is small enough I can simply slide it under the seat of the truck when I need to pop into a store.
Frankly I never understood the whole "monster laptop" thing, because how many actually need to do heavy lifting AND are gonna need to do that lifting on the road? What, is someone asking that guy to design new engineering samples in solidworks from his hotel room? Over the years I've met maybe a half a dozen guys that actually NEED monster laptops while for the rest? It was an ePeen thing which is what the other poster sounds like. Its a laptop dude, not your dick.